New York City is joining the ranks of other North American and European cities by starting a pilot curbside composting program. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, compostable materials make up 56% of the municipal solid waste stream and are responsible for a significant amount of methane emissions when deposited in landfills. Composting is a proven way to reduce GHG emissions while also cutting costs. In recognition of this, NYC has started a pilot composting program in Staten Island, where participation rates have reached 40% after just a few months. The City is hoping to expand the program to cover 100,000 households by 2014. While this program is certainly good news, NYC lags far behind cities like San Francisco, which diverts 78% of its waste from the landfill via mandatory composting, and Copenhagen, which began composting in 1990. Many countries in Europe (Germany, Norway, and Belgium,for example) send less than 3% of their waste to the landfill, thanks to their composting and recycling efforts. NYC has yet to decide where the organic waste will be sent once collected and plans to build a composting plant are still being debated.
Learn more about this story and composting efforts in North America and Europe through this article from Yale Environment 360.